Friday, September 19, 2008

Compositional universalism and monotheism

Compositional universalism says that any collection of non-overlapping beings makes up a whole. (We might restrict this to material objects, but that would be an ad hoc restriction that would make the doctrine not be a true universalism.) Here, "non-overlapping" should, I think, be read not in the spatial sense, but in the mereological sense.

Here is an interesting problem for theists who embrace compositional universalism: It seems to follow that there are wholes of which God is a proper part. Thus, there would be a whole consisting of God and the Empire State Building as its parts. Call this whole x. We can get to a reductio in more than one way from this.

1. God and only God is infinite in the fullest sense. But anything that has a part that is infinite in the fullest sense is infinite in the fullest sense. Therefore, x is infinite in the fullest sense. But x is not God, since God is a proper part of x. This contradicts the claim that only God is infinite in the fullest sense.

2. God and only God has within him perfect goodness. But so does x. Which is absurd.

3. The whole is at least as great as its part. Thus, x is at least as great as God. Which is absurd.

4. Every being other than God is wholly created by God. Therefore, x is wholly created by God. But if y is wholly created by God, then every part of y is wholly created by God. Therefore, every part of x is wholly created by God. Therefore, God is wholly created by God, which is absurd.

I think this is a question. I do not know if "body of Christ" qua Church is an entity. It's true that compositional universalism would let one conclude that it is. But I don't think we need to take it literally as one entity, just as we do not need to take it that a couple literally becomes one body (though in both cases, the reality has the central features of organic unity). One could also suppose that God has the power of using a metaphysical glue of some sort to weld entities into a whole, and can weld the Church (and the couple, I guess) into a whole. That way, compositional universalism would not be required.

Compositional universalism would seem to yield too many entities here anyway. There is the Church. There is the Church minus Peter. There is the Church minus Peter plus Lucifer. There is the Church minus Peter plus the rings of Saturn and plus Peter's left eyebrow. Or so compositional universalism implies.

It seems that 2 rests on the assumption that if a proper part of some whole y has property F, then y has F. But this assumption strikes me as false (fallacy of composition and organic values a la a Moore).

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I am a philosopher at Baylor University. This blog, however, does not purport to express in any way the opinions of Baylor University. Amateur science and technology work should not be taken to be approved by Baylor University. Use all information at your own risk.